


your body like a searchlight

by MiaCooper



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Episode: s02e08 Persistence of Vision, Episode: s04e22 Unforgettable, Episode: s05e10 Counterpoint, Episode: s05e26 Equinox, Episode: s06e11 Fair Haven, Episode: s07e16-17 Workforce, F/F, F/M, Holodeck Sex, Loneliness, Masturbation, Memory Alteration, Merry Month of Cohen, Sexual Content, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-03-30 02:45:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19033159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiaCooper/pseuds/MiaCooper
Summary: It’s a long and lonely journey for a woman who longs for things she won’t allow herself to have.





	1. Mark Johnson

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Leonard Cohen's song [Take This Longing](https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/leonardcohen/takethislonging.html).
> 
> Also inspired by a conversation in the Voyager Book Club discord about how a physically demonstrative person like Janeway might have developed a less-than-healthy aversion to contact as a coping mechanism after being touch-starved for seven years. I figured it’d all be mixed up in a delicious melange of self-hatred, need and inappropriate guilt. Yummy!

_**You're faithful to the better man, I'm afraid that he left** _

She’s been on edge since the encounter in the turbolift, and it doesn’t matter that she was kissing a fabrication, a facsimile of the man she loved and left behind. It felt real. And the feelings that churn inside her now, the feelings that, months ago, she scrunched into a ball and shoved deep, deep down so that she could ignore them… Those are real, too.

Her steps quicken as she approaches her quarters, and it’s fortunate that the corridor is deserted because by the time she reaches her door she’s almost running. Her fingers fumble the entry code. She pushes through the gap and is wrenching off her jacket, kicking off her boots, before the doors have fully closed behind her.

She reaches up to unpin her hair, and stops.

Mark always preferred her hair up, especially when he wanted to make love. She can’t count the times she’d trudged into his apartment, exhausted after a long meeting or a long day or a long mission, her uniform starched and tight as a sausage skin, longing to loosen her collar and take down her hair. He would greet her with a glass of wine and a smoky gleam in his eyes, and he’d bend to brush her lips with his, and instead of lingering there he would let his mouth drift across her cheek and under her jaw …

 _You used to love it when I kissed you there_ , the Bothan hallucination had murmured when she’d tried to push him away. And now, as then, the memory of Mark’s lips tracing the long line of her neck sends a shiver arrowing all the way to her toes.

Kathryn unfastens her turtleneck and tugs the sleeves down her wrists, unhooks her bra, unbuttons her pants. Lightly, experimentally, she skims her palms upward over her abdomen and cups her breasts. She pinches her nipples, the way Mark used to, and her breath catches.

She leaves her hair pinned up.

“Computer, lights out,” she calls. “Hold all communications bar emergencies until further notice.”

The breathy hitch in her voice excites her further. Sinking onto the bed, she spreads her thighs and slides her hand between them. She’s slick and eager and there’s no time for teasing. No need for it either.

There’s just enough starlight to cast a glimmer across the planes and angles of her body as she looks downward, but seeing the taut arch of her wrist, the dance of delicate bones in the back of her hand as she plucks at her own flesh, is a distraction.

Kathryn squinches her eyes closed and imagines Mark’s silvered head between her thighs, his big capable hands holding her wide to him. She recalls the callous on his forefinger as he curled it and rubbed it inside her, and the sounds he’d make, almost groaning, as she began to buck and quiver.

She thinks about the way he would hold her hips, his dexterous tongue and his diligence, and the way he’d look at her as she floated down from her high: entranced, focused, almost reverent.

He was always so good at this; could make her fly without effort or pause. _Nobody compares to you_ , she used to say. _Nobody touches me like you do_.

But the thing she misses most of all is that look in his eyes as he gentled her down.

The joint of her thumb aches and her wrist begins to cramp, but she grits her teeth and ignores it. She’s so close …

_Someone else is in your thoughts now._

Kathryn’s rhythm falters. The edge of her climax ebbs away.

Biting her lip, she rubs harder, faster, spreading her legs wider. _Come on_ , she pleads.

And, yes, maybe she has imagined, maybe she has fantasised … But fantasy isn’t reality, and thinking about another man doesn’t mean she’ll act on it.

“I haven’t been unfaithful,” she entreats aloud.

The sound of her own voice punctures her daydream like a balloon.

The motion of her fingers slows and her wrist sinks and loosens. The gathering frenzy dissipates. Her eyes open.

She stares at the ceiling, breathing hard. Then she pulls her hand from between her legs and rolls onto her side, blinking against the sting of tears.

Fantasy isn’t reality, she reminds herself harshly, and pretending he’s here with her doesn’t make it true.


	2. Chakotay

_**So let me judge your love affair in this very room where I have sentenced mine to death** _

“Personal log, Kathryn Janeway, stardate 51813.5.

“I’m told this log will be erased without leaving the slightest shadow of a trace, as will my memory of the past few days’ events. And, although I hate the idea that something I’ve experienced, something as profound and impactful as Kellin’s visit to this ship, will disappear forever, it’s probably for the best …”

She breaks off to tap her standing order into her replicator, then wraps her hands around the mug and stares into it, unseeing. Just as she had earlier tonight, tucked silently into a corner of the mess hall.

She had heard Chakotay questioning why Kellin hadn’t fallen for him a third time after she’d lost her memories, and Neelix’s reply that love was random, that it could burn hot, or misfire, or not ignite at all, depending on a chance collection of elements.

And Kathryn can’t help but wonder: how does that affect them? How does that apply to her and Chakotay?

“What if our timing had been better,” she muses now, “if I’d been ready on New Earth, or he’d been ready after we received those letters from home? Would love have burned steady for us, or would it, in the end, have failed to spark?

“Would he still have lost interest in me if I’d stopped resisting him?”

She curls up beside the viewport, resting her head against the cool transparent aluminium.

Even if he had lost interest – even if they’d burned so hot the flame was extinguished quickly – it might have been worth it. At least she would know, now, what it was like to be with him, to kiss him and feel him inside her. At least she’d have the memory of him to keep her warm at night.

“It’s been more than three years since I last felt someone’s arms around me,” she says softly. “So long I can’t quite recall the exact shade of Mark’s eyes or the texture of his hair. And even when I try to remember, I can’t be sure it’s a memory and not simply my imagination.”

If she’s honest … remembering hurts too much. Not because she misses Mark, specifically – she stopped missing him a while ago, though she can’t pinpoint exactly when – but because it’s been so long since someone held her close.

She misses feeling safe and loved.

Kathryn sips the bitter coffee and rests the cup on her drawn-up knees.

“I miss sex,” she confesses aloud. “I miss it so much that I won’t, wouldn’t, allow myself it. On New Earth, I resisted Chakotay because I was terrified of losing myself in him. How could I ever command him again if I took him into my body and my bed? How could I separate my feelings from my duty?”

The truth is that she can’t. Not when it comes to him.

If their encounter with the Borg and their subsequent quarrel taught her anything, it’s that she’s incapable of keeping the line unblurred between loving him and commanding him.

As is he. It’s no coincidence that after the Borg, he gradually ceased to look at her with barely concealed desire. He stopped standing so close, resting his palm in the small of her back; stopped smiling at her as though she were a constant source of wonder and delight.

For a while she touched him more frequently, flirted more outrageously, watched him more lingeringly, as if that could bring them back to the way they were.

But Kathryn has to admit to herself that it hasn’t worked.

“He’s farther away from me now than he’s ever been, and with Seven of Nine consuming my emotional energy and Chakotay preoccupied with fallout from the Maquis massacre, I don’t know how to bridge the chasm between us. I’m tired and I’m afraid, and worse, I’m not even sure I want us to be that close again. I’m not sure it’s the best thing for the ship …”

She breaks off. While that may be true – that she’s afraid that kind of closeness with Chakotay would scatter her focus – it’s not the only reason she’s holding back.

It could rip open old wounds that are best left scarred over. There’s no denying that they’ve hurt one another, and that they’ve chosen to solve their differences by ignoring them. Or she has solved them by pulling rank.

He would expect that to change, if they became involved. He would want honesty and companionship; he’d want her to be vulnerable.

He would want all of her, and she’s not sure that she has anything left to give, and if she can’t give, she can’t allow herself to take.

But sometimes the hunger is unbearable. She’s never been someone who can exist without the closeness of touch. She pines for it, and the lack of it becomes a distraction.

This is not an unusual problem for Starfleet officers, particularly humans and other species that wither in the absence of physical contact; particularly commanders on long-term, deep space missions. It’s the reason Starfleet turns a blind eye to the sexual aspect of recreational holodeck use. It’s the reason successful Starfleet marriages often involve acceptance of affairs, or wilful ignorance of them, by the partner left behind.

Kathryn is no saint. She has needs, and she’s been known to seek out the remedy in less than appropriate places.

And maybe if Chakotay could fulfil those needs for her – if he could touch her, kiss her, take her to bed without wanting more, and if she could do the same with him – it could work. But she doesn’t believe they could do that. She believes he would consume her, subsume her; she thinks she would skew his judgement. She suspects they would come to exist only for each other and damn the ship and crew, and that’s a risk she can’t take.

“Maybe it’s for the best that he seeks comfort elsewhere,” she says slowly. “Maybe the next Kellin or the next Riley will be what he needs, and he’ll let me go. And maybe I’ll learn to accept that he’s not mine, and he never can be.”

Kathryn tips her head back against the bulkhead, eyes wide to hold in the useless, self-pitying tears.

She doesn’t want to feel this way – ripped open, spilled out and raw. She wants to tuck her messy, ungainly human desires neatly inside and button up her uniform.

And even if this record were to continue to exist past the next few hours, even if her memories of Kellin continued to exist, there’s no point in dwelling on the things she can’t have.

She stands, spine taut and jaw firm, and straightens the hem of her jacket until she looks as crisp as she did when she strode onto her bridge this morning.

“Computer,” she orders, “erase log.”


	3. Kashyk

_**Hungry as an archway through which the troops have passed, I stand in ruins behind you** _

The water pummels her bowed head, and Kathryn closes her eyes and tips forward until her forehead presses into cool, smooth tile.

He’s gone: sleek leather gloves, supercilious smile and all. His ship slid away, dark and powerful and dangerous just as he was, and she breathed a sigh of relief – she did – but she doesn’t feel relieved.

She’s pent up and agitated and burning with need, and this is the only way she will allow herself to quench it.

Kathryn braces one hand on the shower wall and pushes the other between her thighs, biting down on her lip as she rubs at her own flesh.

And she remembers.

 _Captain Janeway. Report to your ready room_ …

… Each time the call comes, she fights to tame the leap of her heart and the clenching of her belly. She can’t bear to look any of her bridge crew in the eyes lest they read the churning anticipation in hers. Especially Chakotay, who shifts in his chair, brooding and dark and wearing a scowl that he passes off as concern, but that she knows means something far more complicated.

_Tell me, are all of your inspections this personal?_

Oh, but how she courts his inspection. She tells Chakotay, tells Tuvok – even tells herself – that she’s simply drawing Kashyk’s attention, flirting to misdirect. A masterful deceit; a sleight of hand.

There’s no rule that stipulates she can’t enjoy it.

Perhaps she enjoys it a little too much.

Chakotay certainly believes so. The night Kashyk defects, after she’s ensconced him in guest quarters with a locked-down replicator and sentries posted outside, Chakotay appears, scowling, at her door.

“You know you can’t trust him,” he says, belligerent, as if he has that right.

She cocks a hip, watching with amusement as Chakotay’s gaze trails heat along the shadowed curve of her body. Her soft chuckle brings his spine snapping straight and his eyes back to hers.

“He’s using you.”

“Maybe I’m using him, too,” she parries.

“You’re playing with fire, Kathryn,” Chakotay says. “Don’t be a fool.”

And she leans in close, smiling at him without warmth, and replies with resonant clarity, “Fuck you.”

His recoil is as exquisitely painful as a slap in the face. She turns to the darkness of her quarters so as not to give herself away.

“Dismissed, Commander.”

“I’ll be on the bridge,” he says, lava bubbling beneath ice, “Captain.”

 _You know the way to my ready room_ …

… She widens her stance, curls her fingers into a well of slickness and shame. Her breath is gusting faster now, the beat of blood in her ears almost drowning out the drubbing of water over her head and shoulders.

She pictures him, lounging in her chair behind her desk in her ready room, his long lithe body encased in black leather, like a snake’s skin. The way his dark eyes follow her as she moves toward him, and the way she puts a little extra curve in her walk, a little tilt in her hips, as she lets her gaze drift down to his lips.

She recalls removing her jacket in the mess hall, draping herself almost across his body. He looks different in civilian clothes, touchable; his hair ruffled as though she’s been running her fingers through it. She remembers turning her face, so close to his, reading the spark of heat in his eyes … and now her fingers are quickening, an ache gathering low in her belly …

… _I suppose you liked me better in uniform._

 _I haven’t decided whether I like you at all_ …

… Oh, but she hates him and everything he stands for, and her hatred means nothing to her in this moment. All she wants is to peel him out of his clothes, press her skin to his, feel the imprint of his hands on her, around her, inside her. She wants to push his face between her legs and let him eat her like a succulent fruit. She wants him to bite her and score her skin and tear her apart. She wants him to swallow her whole.

And the way he looks at her … for so long, she’s been wilfully blind to the same look in another man’s hot dark eyes, and it thrills her to see it in Kashyk’s. Unveiled and unashamed, hiding nothing. Telling her clearly, without words, that he intends her to be his.

She brings her other hand to her breast, pinching and tweaking her nipple, the pleasure-pain rippling through her like needles, like shards of glass …

 _I was planning on asking you to stay with us once we got through the wormhole_ …

… When she kisses him in the shuttle bay, it’s the closest she comes to forgetting that she’s playing a role. She’s swollen with need, almost bursting, barely stitched into her own skin; and when his lips sear the inside of her wrist she gasps and trembles like a maiden.

She could throw herself into his shuttle and run away with him.

The idea is more tempting than it has a right to be.

What if she did? What would it be like to be his lover, kept naked on silk sheets, accessible whenever the whim took him? Would he live up to the promise his eyes make when he looks at her?

Would it be worth it?

Her fingers slide and rub. She presses her face to the cool tiled wall, mouth open and panting, her pulse thundering.

She pictures his hands, leather-gloved and clever and shaping the pale contours of her skin, bruising, electrifying. She imagines his mouth closing around her nipple, the hot pull and suction, the rasp of his tongue. She imagines his cock driving inside her. Filling her. Owning her.

And the swelling ache bursts, a moan dragging its way from deep in her core as she slumps against the shower wall, shaking, sated, sickened.

The water runs cold.

… _You created false readings._

_That is the theme for this evening, isn’t it?_

Kathryn curls up in the corner of her couch. She is swathed in her most shapeless clothing, wet hair wrapped tightly in a towel. Her face is scrubbed clean.

She wishes her soul could be, too.


	4. Seven of Nine

_**Let me see your beauty broken down, like you would do for one you love** _

In her alcove, Seven is reminiscent of a statue, an object of beauty carved in marble. An object to be admired, even coveted, but never to be touched. Never to be warmed by human hands or breath.

Kathryn cannot count the times she has stood here, watching Seven as she sleeps. If asked – if caught – she might claim she’s ensuring the younger woman’s wellbeing, or guarding her dreams. As a mother would for her child.

But there is nothing maternal about the images jostling for space in her mind.

Her relationship with Seven is complex and dark and difficult to quantify. It’s more than duty, more than responsibility. More than love, even, and as such, leaves less room for the other things, the other people, she loves.

Which is just one more thing to feel guilty about.

Kathryn’s feet ache in her high-heeled boots and she shifts her weight, leaning a hip against the duranium casing of Seven’s regeneration unit. Her eyes blur with fatigue.

She’s been tired for five years, but this is a whole new level of exhaustion, perhaps because it’s tainted with shame. Over the past few days she hasn’t exactly behaved as a Starfleet captain should.

It’s not the first time she’s been prepared to endanger her crew to rescue Seven, and she can admit to herself it won’t be the last. This time, though, she was ready to shred her principles like so much tissue paper. Oh, she claimed it was to stop Ransom, and it mostly was, but she can’t deny that his abduction of Seven made it personal on a whole other level.

In her exhausted, livid state of mind, she had pictured Ransom misusing Seven, his fingers and eyes crawling all over her like foul beetles. She’d imagined Seven restrained, hurt, stripped and violated, and it had unhinged her.

It’s why she lost her mind when she questioned Noah Lessing. She’d have killed him and taken pleasure in it. She’d have destroyed the _Equinox_ and everyone in her to get Seven back, or as vengeance for the loss of her.

Because to her, Seven is worth a hundred Lessings, a thousand Ransoms. Seven is worth the permanent loss of Kathryn’s own peace of mind.

She wonders if Chakotay knows that. If it’s why he’s so angry with Kathryn and so jealous of her protégée.

She can’t, at this moment, find it within herself to care.

Kathryn tips her head against the regeneration control panel, careful not to trigger the waking sequence. Behind Seven’s closed eyelids there is no movement, nothing to indicate the young woman dreams. She wonders if Seven’s sleep is restful.

Her own is most certainly not.

The last time she slept – she can’t remember how long ago that was; days, perhaps – she dreamed of Seven. Pale hair loose and shining, her figure swathed in something soft and pale-pink, her skin petal-soft and perfect without its silver Borg tracery. She’s smiling, her hair ruffled by a light sea breeze as she walks toward Kathryn, and her feet are bare. She glides over sharp barnacled rocks without seeming to feel them slicing her, and when she steps onto the beach where Kathryn waits, blood wells from her soles and soaks into the sand.

Kathryn remembers watching Seven bleed, her eyes drawn to the crimson pooling under her bare feet. She remembers crouching to touch it, studying the imprint of her palm and spread fingers in the sodden sand. She remembers, in the dream, Seven’s hands reaching down to cup her face, to twist gently into Kathryn’s hair, guiding her upward until Kathryn can see the dark sweep of Seven’s lashes and the pink of her cushiony lips.

She remembers her own lips parting, her breath catching in her lungs as Seven bends to kiss her, the tip of her tongue tracing along Kathryn’s lower lip until she welcomes it inside with a shuddering sigh.

Kathryn remembers falling into that kiss, the soft collision of bodies, the way her hands map the contours of Seven’s body and peel away the layers of her clothing. She remembers the pink dress falling to the sand, Seven’s blood seeping into it, staining it. She remembers cupping full breasts in her palms, her vision blurring, a hallucinatory overlay of bleeding veins decorating Seven’s pale, perfect skin.

She remembers assimilation tubules sprouting from her own hand, piercing Seven’s long throat like a vampire’s bite, and her own fascinated lust as the blood wells up, as she leans in to lap at it.

Kathryn jerks awake against the regeneration console, heart thundering sickly. Her eyes go immediately to Seven, cataloguing the form-fitting biosuit, the neatly swept-back hair, the spiked silver star on her cheekbone.

Seven is so still; not even the faintest flicker of expression crosses her flawless face. Kathryn can’t help but gaze at her, imagining those pink, pouted lips against her own, that body clothed in soft layers and revealed under her own acquisitive hands.

What is she doing, staring at this woman with covetous hunger? As though Seven’s beauty gives Kathryn the right to desire her, to lust after her like Kovin or Kurros or any of the others who would possess her?

Like Ransom.

Kathryn’s stomach curdles with guilt, and she steps back from Seven’s regeneration unit as though physical distance will mute this yearning into something small and manageable; something she can ignore.

It has to, she orders herself. She has to ignore it, deny it, pretend it doesn’t exist. Because Seven doesn’t deserve Kathryn’s lonely, guilt-ridden infatuation, and Kathryn doesn’t deserve Seven.


	5. Michael Sullivan

_**Just take this longing from my tongue, all the useless things my hands have done** _

_Did you have intimate relations?_

_That’s none of your business. Let’s just say it was a memorable three days._

Memorable, yes. Michael Sullivan takes her on picnics, flirts with her, pays her compliments. He makes her feel like she’s a woman, not just pips and a uniform. That, in itself, is a novelty she hasn’t enjoyed for over five years.

And yes, she kissed him. She let him ease her down on that blanket in a field of waving grasses, let him slide his hand under her skirts and press his lips to her décolletage. She let him slip his fingers inside her drawers and stroke her to a gasping, trembling climax.

But fuck him? No.

As soon as her breathing slowed, she’d pushed his hand away and deactivated his program.

She tells the Doctor that Michael had fallen asleep and begun to snore, and she’d been about to change his parameters, but the truth of it is this: in the face of the Doctor’s professional counsel and Chakotay’s smug advice and Tom Paris’ fawning concern, she can’t even bring herself to use her walking, talking, holographic vibrator as she’s designed him.

More, she can’t bear the idea of letting him hold her through the afterglow. Because her orgasm might be real, but he is not.

Kathryn curls up in her customary spot on the couch beneath her viewport. She’s wearing a stretched old tank top and track pants she’s had since the academy; the tank is tight across her breasts and there’s a coffee stain on her thigh, but it doesn’t matter. These are her comfort clothes, soft and well-worn, and at this moment she needs something familiar to ground her. She needs something real.

She’s tired of dressing up, of playing a part, whether it’s Captain Janeway or Katie O’Clare. And it’s not as if she’s expecting an audience –

The door chimes, and Kathryn utters a disbelieving, frustrated sigh. “Enter.”

Chakotay steps into her quarters with his head bent to a padd, an affectation that doesn’t fool her for a minute.

“What is it, Commander?” she demands, her tone as uninviting as her body language.

“Status report on the hull fracture repairs. B’Elanna estimates three days until we’re back to full structural integrity. That neutronic wavefront really packed a punch.”

Kathryn takes the padd ungraciously, skims it and tosses it onto the coffee table.

Chakotay remains standing at ease in front of her. He’s too smart to fully relax, and smart enough to school his expression.

“If there’s nothing else,” she growls, “you’re dismissed, Commander.”

“Actually,” and apparently he’s not smart enough to take a damn hint, “there is.”

Kathryn crosses one leg over the other, folds her hands on her knee and stares at him.

Chakotay lowers himself to sit beside her. He’s watching her, and the latent heat in his eyes makes her avert her own.

“Are you all right, Kathryn?”

“I’m fine.”

“I’m sorry about Fair Haven.”

“Are you.”

It’s not a question, but he narrows his eyes and answers her anyway.

“Yes, I am. It was important to you.” Chakotay pauses. “ _He’s_ important to you.”

Her skin itches. “He’s a hologram.”

_I never let that stand in my way._

“It’s not real,” she mutters. “ _He_ isn’t real.”

She feels his fingers on the back of her hand and her breath catches.

“I’m real,” he says.

Kathryn can’t help the widening of her eyes as his meaning sinks in.

 _Can I?_ she wonders, studying him. _Can we?_

He’s still hunched forward on the edge of the couch, the tips of his fingers resting lightly on her hand and barely-veiled heat in his eyes. And she’s tempted – so tempted – even sways forward a fraction as her gaze drops to his mouth, so close…

She looks up again, and there’s the briefest flicker of something else in his eyes, and everything in her recoils.

“Get out,” she grates. “I don’t need your _pity_ , Chakotay.”

“Kathryn, that’s not –”

“Get. _Out_.”

He nods, withdraws his hand from hers, and makes for the door, where he pauses.

“I don’t pity you, Kathryn,” he says without turning. “But if that’s really what you think, maybe you’re better off with your hologram.”

Then he’s gone, and she turns her face to the stars, biting her lip and telling herself the tears in her eyes are from anger, not humiliation.

_Maybe I just needed to be sure that he’d love me back._


	6. Jaffen

_**And everything depends upon how near you sleep to me** _

_“I love you,” he groans with his face in her hair. His body shudders, and his narrow hips press bruises into the tender skin of her inner thighs._

_“Shh,” Kathryn soothes him. She tightens her arms around him and tilts her hips in welcome. God, it’s been so long; she can’t even remember the last time she opened herself to a man this way._

_She’s smiling as she turns her mouth to his._

The Doctor’s cure for their rewired memory pathways has an unpleasant side effect: some of the crew are experiencing flashbacks so vivid they feel like reality. The captain, of course, demanded the full course of treatment in one dose, and as a result she is suffering.

She shifts in her chair on the bridge. She can still feel the phantom ache and pull inside her thighs, the dull fullness low in her belly from their last night’s lovemaking, but the physical discomfort can’t compare to the distress – the anguish – she is hiding behind her serene expression.

_I won’t need souvenirs to remember you._

No, she won’t. The difficulty is going to be in forgetting.

And she wants so badly to forget.

_Kathryn curls up on the floor of the shower cubicle. Her skin is red from the scouring water. Her insides feel raw._

_She misses him, misses being with him, misses being the woman she was with him._

_And she hopes she never sees him again, because everything in her recoils from the knowledge he has of her._

_She doesn’t realise, until she’s ordered the water off and stepped out to find her face still wet, that she’s crying._

Quarra slips behind them as _Voyager_ warps on toward the Alpha quadrant, and Captain Janeway curls her fingernails into the arms of her chair. Beside her, Chakotay glances to his right. She can feel his eyes on her: cataloguing, assessing, pitying.

If he asks her if she’s all right, she is going to scream.

She rockets out of her chair. “You have the bridge, Commander,” she grates, and escapes to her ready room. Her sanctuary.

Only it’s not.

_I’m not really hungry … Let’s stay here._

_They come together for the first time in a kiss worthy of an old-time movie; she could swear she hears the music swell, feels herself floating as he takes her in his arms. When did she last feel like this? She can’t remember, and it bothers her._

_Has it really been so long since a man touched her that she can barely keep herself upright? And why would she, who loves, needs to be touched, have deprived herself of simple contact?_

_But as his hands push under her clothing and she gasps and presses closer to him, she no longer cares._

“Coffee, black,” the captain rasps, more to hear the sound of her voice – a distraction – than because she actually wants one. It’s one advantage of her forced vacation on Quarra, she supposes with a wry twist of the mouth: she was cured of her caffeine addiction. A situation she intends to remedy as soon as humanly possible.

Caffeine, after all, has always been her go-to substitute for sex, no matter how poor a replacement it may be.

_Making a hot drink is one thing I can do._

On the other hand, it’s far better as an accompaniment to sex than an alternative to it.

_He’s here to say goodbye. She says the things that are expected of her even though it’s killing her; she performs her part to perfection, with just the right amount of heartache and drama, enough to hide the swelling depths of agony beneath. She lets a single tear fall as she embraces him, offers him a brave and wobbling smile, and sends him on his way._

_She acts as if she’s devastated by the loss of him, and hides the real devastation Quarra wrought on the inside._

_And then she allows herself one minute, in the sanctuary of her ready room, to fall apart. Because she can’t afford any longer than that, anywhere else, to indulge in it, or she might never scrape herself back together._

The captain’s hands wrap around the steaming cup. She wonders if this heat is a substitute, too, for the warmth of hands around hers, a body in her bed.

She could have the real thing. If she’d wanted to, she could have had Jaffen stay on board without fraternisation protocols striking an artificial distance between them.

She could turn to Chakotay; he’s made the offer before.

The idea of it makes her want to retch.

It’s not that Chakotay isn’t attractive to her; aesthetically, she can appreciate that he’s a handsome man. But the thought of him touching her – him, or anyone else, she admits to herself at last – is sickening.

It would feel like a violation of her most private self, the last hidden piece of Kathryn beneath the mantle, the thick outer shell of the captain.

And, no matter how she longs for it to be different, the captain is the only protection she has left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who contributed to the Merry Month of Cohen - it's been angsterrific.
> 
> If you haven't already done so, please check out the [Who By Fire collection](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/merrymonthofcohen) for more Cohen-inspired angst.


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